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An Electro-Motive Division GP7 pulls a short train past the Aberdeen & Rockfish RR General Offices on Jon Fruth’s HO scale Wolf Creek Central in the photo at left. Jon kitbashed a Faller small-town town hall kit to model the prototype building (above). 2011 Structure Kitbashing Contest F or nearly 120 years, the North Carolina-based Aberdeen & Rockfish RR has remained steadfast to its motto, “The Road of Personal Service.” This 50-mile short line wends its way over the sandhill region of southeast North Carolina, from Aberdeen to the banks of the Cape Fear River in Fayetteville. The A&R’s Federal-style office building has been in daily use since its construction in 1904, and like much of this railroad, it begs to be modeled. A visit to Aberdeen got me hooked on the idea of adding a model of the office to my HO scale Wolf Creek Central. But I wanted to be sure I could model the building to my satisfaction. So I chucked a hardwood toothpick in my drill press. Working from my photo of the building’s portico, I used files and sandpaper to turn a finial for the doorway. I was pleased with the results, so the next step was to find a model for the parts of the building around the finial. Searching hobby catalogs for a suit- able kit, I found only one kit that came close to the prototype: Faller’s smalltown town hall. Although the kit seemed like a good starting point, the picture on its box showed several significant differences. The roof was totally wrong. The front was seven windows wide, one more than the prototype. And the town hall was three stories high – one floor taller than my prototype. But it was the best I could find. And I already had a really neat finial in hand, so I was committed to the project. Follow along to see how I used this European structure kit to model my American prototype. We’d like to thank everyone who entered Model Railroader’s Trackside Structure Kitbashing Contest. Second-place winner Kazuo Terasawa will show in our June issue how he converted an HO scale Athearn hopper car to a model of a Wisconsin Central sand tower. Then, in July and August, contest winner Jim Richards will take us through how he built an HO scale enginehouse with interior detail from Walthers and Pikestuff parts. – Steven Otte, associate editor Jon Fruth got interested in trains while growing up in railroading’s “Iron Triangle” of Fostoria, Ohio. His HO scale Wolf Creek Central is loosely based on the Aberdeen & Rockfish. Jon and his wife, Jean, live in Kokomo, Ind., and have three grown children and four grandchildren. MAY 2011 • Model Railroader 43